I have been a Senior Managing Director at 4 national real estate firms over 40 years, and I have never experienced any firm as inept and unprofessional as Zapitelli Financial Services. I am convinced that the only reason they are still in business is that like me, people didn't take the time to check them out on this website or on Yelp, in which they would find similar horror stories that others have experienced as we just did. Consider yourself fortunate to be reading the following:
We are a small family company that owns rental homes in Northeast Ohio and they have been doing our tax returns for the past 4-5 years. Like some other reviewers, if you asked me about them last year, I would have said, "sure, they are fine, seem friendly and we have experienced no problems." What people don't realize is that due to the technical nature of what they do, mistakes can go unnoticed for years until it's too late. And if mistakes are found, don't expect them to take any responsibility.
About a month ago, we realized that they incorrectly set up the ownership of our 25 rental homes in our tax returns in such a way that it opened us up to potential liability and made our accounting fees higher than they should have been. So I immediately made them aware of their mistake.
After sending several emails back and forth, Diana Zapitelli became very defensive, taking absolutely no responsibility for anything, said I never sent them the Operating Agreements which spells out ownership identity, and said the ownership structure listing the sub entities in our personal names was my fault, and they would have to charge us for re-doing our 2022 returns.
Fortunately, I keep all emails relating to our business. I found and sent them copies of the emails that I sent her back in 2018 that had the Operating Agreements describing ownership. Realizing this was irrefutable evidence, I added to the email, "would you like to change your position?" I expected an apology and offer to resolve the problem at their cost but no response was forthcoming.
She never responded. I was tired of all of the back and forth emails, so I decided to call to speak to Diana first. She started calmly, continuing to avoid responsibility, but quickly flared and became aggressive yelling "as a young professional woman, I don't appreciate your attitude asking me if I would like to change my position!!! I never received your Operating Agreement describing who the owners were, I sent you a screenshot of my hard drive showing you its not there (seriously?), and entered you and your partner as owners as I THOUGHT I had seen that somewhere!! (now this is a CPA mind you)". She continued, "It was YOUR responsibility to have found and corrected our error before this!!" When I then started to respond, I didn't get 3 or 4 words out when her father Bob Zapitelli, who was listening in the background, interrupted me yelling out, "YOU CAN GO F--- YOURSELF!!! COME AND GET YOUR BOXES AND GET THEM OUT OF HERE!!!" As he continued ranting, I calmly said "You will be hearing from our attorney" and hung up the phone.
I was shocked at what just happened so decided to look up reviews of the company on Yelp to see if the issue was just with me. I found 9 out of 10 other experiences of inept accounting and rude, arrogant behavior. And the 6th review down, was almost an exact experience of the one I just described with similar rantings from Bob Zapitelli. That post was from Nov of 2017 which shows a long pattern of inept accounting and customer abuse. This wasn't just them having a bad day.
Even if she didn't receive the Operating Agreement (which I don't believe), she should NEVER have set up our returns without it, regardless what she thought. That's accounting 101. But I never received a request from her for it, so we assumed she received it, and that everything was set up correctly. And its NOT the customer's responsibility to check all of their accountant's entries to make sure no errors are made. Am I supposed to have another accountant check their returns to make sure they didn't make mistakes? Or what if I was an elderly person?
There are plenty of diligent and professional accounting firms out there. Steer far clear of this one. They are not worth the risk or the abuse. read more